Useful for removing punctuation marks from various natural languages and from text that may contain non-standard punctuation marks (such as emojis and pictographs). Tested with English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Installation

pip install mnl-punct-norm

Sample Code

from mnl_punct_norm.normalizer import is_punct, strip_outer_punct, strip_punct, replace_punct 

is_punct(char)

Required argument -> char

Note: char must be a str type with length of 1.

#Half-width period used in English, etc.
print("Half-width period is_punct -> {}".format(is_punct(".")))

#Full-width period used in Japanese, etc.
print("Full-width period is_punct -> {}".format(is_punct("。")))

#Hiragana character
print("Hiragana character is_punct -> {}".format(is_punct("あ")))

#Kanji
print("Kanji character is_punct -> {}".format(is_punct("私")))

#Pictograph example
print("★ is_punct -> {}".format(is_punct("★")))

strip_outer_punct(word)

Strips leading and trailing punctuation (stops at alphanumeric character or whitespace character).

source1 = "(((((((hey-buddy-how-is-it-going))))))"
print(strip_outer_punct(source1))

source2 = "x=3-2"
print(strip_outer_punct(source2))

strip_punct(input_str, input_skips = "")

This function strips all punctuation marks from a string.

Required argument -> input_str

input_str is the string from which punctuation marks are to be stripped.

input_str must be passed as a str type.

Optional argument -> input_skips

input_skips is a string containing a sequence of punctuation marks that are not to be stripped from input_str.

input_skips must be passed as a str type.

source_str = "This light-weight module, which provides multi-language support, normalizes punctuation in strings."

#Strips all punctuation from source_str.
print(strip_punct(source_str))

#Strips all punctuation from source_str, except for hyphens.
print(strip_punct(source_str, "-"))

#Strips all punctuation from source_str, except for hyphens and commas.
print(strip_punct(source_str, "-,"))

japanese_str = "私は人間（にんげん）です。"

#Strips all punctuation from japanese_str.
print(strip_punct(japanese_str))

#Strips all punctuation from japanese_str, except for parentheses.
print(strip_punct(japanese_str, "（）"))

replace_punct(input_str, input_skips = "", replacement= " ")

This function replaces all punctuation marks in a string with either a half-width space (default) or a user-specified string.

Required argument -> input_str

input_str is the string in which punctuation marks are to be replaced. input_str must be passed as a str type.

Optional arguments -> input_skips, replacement

input_skips is a string containing a sequence of punctuation marks that are not to be replaced with the replacement string.

input_skips must be passed as a str type.

replacement is a string that is used to replace punctuation marks (a half-width space by default).

replacement must be passed as a str type.

Note: If the replacement string follows a space or other substring that is equal to the replacement string, the replacement string will not be added (to avoid creating extra spaces/substrings in the string returned by the function).

Also, in cases where multiple punctuations marks are used sequentially, only a single instance of the replacement string will be used.

Note: There may be leading/trailing spaces in the string returned by the function, so you may want to use the strip() method if necessary.

#Replaces all punctuation in source_str with a half-width space.
print(replace_punct(source_str))

#Replaces all punctuation in source_str with " <PUNCT> ".
print(replace_punct(source_str, replacement = " <PUNCT> "))

#Replaces all punctuation in japanese_str with a full-width space.
print(replace_punct(japanese_str, replacement = "　"))

#String with multiple punctuation marks. The extra spaces in the string are not normalized by the function.
multiple_punct_str = "Wha ... what are you     doing!?!?"

#Example in which multiple punctuation marks are used in a row.
print(replace_punct(multiple_punct_str))

#Example in which multiple punctuation marks are used in a row, with replacement passed as " <PUNCT> ".
print(replace_punct(multiple_punct_str, replacement = " <PUNCT> "))

Use Case: Removing non-standard punctuation marks while keeping standard punctuation marks

There may be cases where you only want to remove non-standard punctuation marks (such as in text taken from reviews, comment sections, or other places on the Web).

import string
from mnl_punct_norm.normalizer import strip_punct

#Standard English punctuation marks.
english_punct = string.punctuation
print(english_punct)

#Source string containing both standard and non-standard punctuation marks.
source_str = "★♡▲ Have a nice day!! ★♡▲"

#Non-standard punctuation marks are removed, while the standard punctuation marks remain.
print(strip_punct(source_str, english_punct))

Other languages

JavaScript -> https://github.com/Rairye/js-mnl-punct-norm